


Eyes Like Broken Christmas Lights

by orphan_account



Category: Bandom, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Christmas, Depression, Holidays, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Loneliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-13
Updated: 2017-12-13
Packaged: 2019-02-14 10:17:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13005624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: It’s four days until Christmas and Spencer is not ready. He doesn’t think he ever will be. He feels hopeless.





	Eyes Like Broken Christmas Lights

**Eyes Like Broken Christmas Lights**

Spencer trudges over to the vinyl player to replay the record he has in already, thinking to himself _I have nothing better to do_. The first song to play is Lonely Days by Bee Gees. Along with the first notes of the piano, he raises his hands and exclaims to the empty house “Of all the fucking songs”.

Instead of turning it off, he sits himself down on the cold linoleum, in front of the black, empty Christmas tree. There are no baubles, tinsel, or lights. He just couldn’t bring himself to do it.

“God, I should have at least decorated this void of a house.” He muffles into his hands that he’s placed his face in.

He stays there, body stiff, still and silent, with just the music in the background that’s boasting, rhetorically asking anyone who’ll listen: where would he be without his woman?

The seemingly endless chorus finally takes a break and the second verse comes into play. Spencer is thankful. When the verse ends and the chorus kicks in again he abruptly stands up and takes the needle off, silencing the vinyl.

_Now there’s nothing to fill the emptiness._

He picks up his phone and decides to open up Instagram. The first picture forced upon him is of Vicky T and her family by the Christmas tree - not exactly what Spencer needed. He sighs and closes the app, not bothering to scroll through in hopes that there could be a post unrelated to the God damn holiday.

Instead, he now opens Twitter. Everyone’s pessimistic there.

After liking a few tweets and avoiding every account other than ones with solely meme content, he locks his phone and puts it down, concluding that he is still not cured from the loneliness.

Brendon has Sarah, Dallon has Breezy, Zack’s visiting his family and Ryan’s gone, along with Jon who had Cassie anyway.

Spencer gets up off the sofa and aggressively says under his breath “I’m going to deal with this like a fucking man, already.”

When he gets to the kitchen, he snatches a Jack Daniels whiskey and places it to his lips, ready to destruct. However, he’s stopped by the sound of a text.

“Please be a fucking sign.” He ungracefully puts the glass bottle down on the kitchen countertop and walks back over to the couch. _Oh, good news, @satan and @meme2 just liked a tweet._

He storms back over to the whiskey bottle and holds it in his hands just staring at it. He knows it’s the worst idea possible, but somewhere inside of him, he wants to fuck up.

He’s interrupted in his thoughts by another notification. He puts the bottle down and desperately whispers a “please” as he goes to check his phone.

It’s Brendon.

The message reads: “Hey, are you home?”

Without hesitating, his fingers are quick to type: “Wouldn’t call it home.”

He doesn’t want to deal with this shit anymore and he doesn’t want to hide it, either. He’s so sick of it.

The grey bubble that informs Spencer that Brendon’s typing appears, disappears and reappears more times than he can count in the three minutes it does so. He swallows the lump in his throat, trying to rid the apprehension and guilt he now has after sending such a bold text.

Finally, Brendon messages back a simple and short “I was thinking maybe I could come over?”

“Yeah, sure.” Spencer sends back.

He throws the phone back onto the sofa and returns to the kitchen. Instead of downing the whole bottle like he intended to, he screws the cap on and walks out, leaving it lonely on the kitchen counter.

“And now we wait.” He sighs, sitting back down.

It takes 10 minutes before there’s a knock on the door. Those minutes of which were spent trying not to make the constant migraine worse by giving in to going on his phone again.

He opens the door and looks at Brendon stood with perfect hair, a black leather jacket, skinny jeans and a scarf. “Hey,” the man says breathlessly after walking in the harsh winter wind. Spencer lets him in, not saying a word, so Brendon does the job for him, asking “Are you okay?”

He nods, still silent, and gestures for Brendon to sit down meanwhile he does so himself.

Once they’re sat together, Brendon stays persistent, asking “What’s wrong?”

Spencer shakes his head, presses his lips together as hard as he can and swallows the lump that keeps reappearing in his throat. He doesn’t manage to swallow it away, despite his efforts.

Brendon’s now slow and worried with his words, “Please, Spence. I know something’s up.”

He’s still; he’s silent.

He breaks. Tears leak down all the way to his chin and he feels he has to hide his face by burying it in his lap with his hands sheilding it.

Brendon moves closer to him, shocked. He puts a friendly arm around him and tries to comfort him by stroking him with the other hand. Spencer thinks about how lucky he is to have a best friend that even cares about his existence along with all other actual priorities.

He gradually stops crying, and when he does, he lifts his head up and Brendon takes his arm off of him and holds Spencer’s hand with both of his own.

“I’m so sorry,” Spencer apologises to Brendon.

“Hey, it’s okay.” Brendon reassures him. “You know, I get it.”

“Do you really, though? I don’t think you do. I’m so happy that you care, in fact I’m relieved. But, you wouldn’t get it. You live with Sarah. You don’t live alone.”

“Why didn’t you go and see your mom back in Vegas?” He asks, trying to help instead of mourn.

“I don’t even fucking know. Why didn’t I? Well, it’s too late now, anyway.”

“You haven’t um...” Brendon begins, but Spencer doesn’t know what he’s referring to so Brendon continues, “you haven’t had any alcohol, have you?” Brendon takes a deep breath.

“You have no clue how close I was.”

Little did Brendon know, his text saved Spencer from fucking up his sobriety.

“Oh my god.” The words crawling from Brendon’s lips are inaudible. He sounds a million times more breathless than he did when he first came through the door. In comparison, he sounds like he has no lungs, now.

“I know.” Spencer says.

There’s a silence.

“And I’m sorry.” He adds, defeated.

Brendon‘s eyes travel the room. He glances at the dull tree and comes up with an idea. “Hey, we’re going out, okay? Okay. You don’t get a say in this. Don’t worry, we’re not going to a club or a bar or anything. We’re going to Walmart.”

“Sounds fun!” Spencer laughs, genuinely happy, through the sarcasm and the tears and runny nose that are still in the process of drying.

“It’ll be more fun than you think.” Brendon gives him a wiggle of his eyebrows.

“God, better not tell Sarah.” He jokes and Brendon rolls his eyes with a grin.

“Under all that sadness, you still manage to make everything a joke. I truly admire and love you, Spencer Smith.” Brendon’s suddenly throwing a coat at him.

Once they’re all dressed up for the cold, Spencer opens the door and Brendon walks out first, so Spencer can lock up.

“Are we really going to Walmart?” Spencer asks and Brendon comfirms. “Well, okay then.” He laughs.

After walking not too far, they come to a stop as a huge Walmart is right in front of them. Spencer looks at Brendon raising his eyebrows, trying to get something out of him. The look gets him nothing other than Brendon carrying on walking forwards. He follows him uncertainly until Brendon’s picked up a basket and took him to the Christmas decoration aisle.

“What colour decorations do you want for your tree?” He asks, confrontingly.

“Is that what we’re here for?” Spencer asks back, avoiding the question that’s just been thrown at him.

“Yes,” is all Brendon answers because he’s stubborn.

Instead of getting mad, Spencer bites his tongue and through gritted teeth, says “Okay.”

“So what colour?”

“Silver, I guess.”

Brendon picks up a plastic box of thin silver tinsel that somehow looks pretty for a string of glitter shit.

“You choose the baubles.” Brendon tells Spencer.

Spencer glances at the options he’s been given. He decides on matte champagne gold with a few small glitter gold ones in there, too. He’ll cope.

“And for lights?”

He chooses the basic white ones because they’re the most pleasant. Multi-coloured ones have always been ugly to him, regardless of his mental state and relationship status.

“Nice, now lets go and pay.” Brendon takes him to the checkout.

When the woman serving them gives them the price, Brendon gets out his card and Spencer says “I’ll pay for my own Christmas decorations, Christ, Bren.”

“I insist on being the good friend that I am and, therefore paying to make you happy.”

Spencer smiles and says “Sure.”

They finish paying and bagging their purchases up and return to the cold of outside.

They walk back to Spencer’s and when they get inside, the first thing Brendon does is go through the record collection and pick out a Nirvana record.

The music fills the room and Spencer realises he was probably going wrong with the music choices and ultimately made himself feel worse at the time.

Brendon sings along to random lines meanwhile he takes out the decorations and Spencer decides to help, not expecting to be decorating it right now. Everything is now out of its box, so he asks “So... should we start with the tinsel?”

“Definitely,” Brendon answers. “You do the top and I’ll do the bottom?”

“Were you that forward with Ryan, discussing sex positions?”

“Shut the fuck up!” He rolls his eyes and fails to suppress a laugh, giving in to the comedic value that the joke offered.

Spencer grabs the tinsel and begins wrapping it round the tree.

“You know, you should text your mom.” Brendon suggests as he starts to dress the tree too.

“You don’t think it’s too late?” Spencer questions.

“No! She’s your mom!”

When he finishes wrapping the tinsel, he finds his phone and composes a message: “Hey mom, I know Christmas is only four days away, but I was wondering if I could come over? - S”

He puts the phone down and returns to Brendon, who has begun with the baubles already. “There.” He says with a slight sense of accomplishment coming through his voice.

They continue to decorate, mindlessly singing along to the record until they’re left with just the lights to do.

“I’ll leave you to do the honours.” Brendon winks.

Spencer takes the bottom end of the lights and plugs them in to the nearest socket. They’re still not switched on yet, however. He wraps them from the bottom to the top and when he’s finally finished, he hits the switch and steps back to look.

He’s found with disbelief. He looks to Brendon who offers a proud smile. “We did it.” I say.

“We did. Happy Christmas.” Brendon laughs and it’s visible that he’s getting really emotional now and that he’s holding back tears.

“Come here.” Spencer says. They share a long hug, and while in the embrace, he whispers “I’m so glad I have my best friend.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, I really hope you liked this. I love Spencer so much and really wanted to write with him as the protagonist, so here we are! I also really wanted to write a holiday appropriate fic because I don’t want to run out of prompts in all the other times of the year. You’ve got to take advantage of these times, you know! ;)
> 
> Kudos/comments/bookmarks are appreciated of course.
> 
> Happy holidays!
> 
> \- Nicole xx


End file.
